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As the world around us grows busier, more hectic and faster by the day, it is apparent that chaos exists everywhere, resulting in people getting more stressed, more drained, and just increasingly overwhelmed.

‘Tranquility’ is an experimental sensory experience that talks about the search for our own personal solace amidst the chaos of everyday life. It has been said that “beautiful, regular forms are found within apparent randomness”. The journey and transition towards tranquility in this experience seeks to find those beautiful forms and the peace of regularity in our lives- the tranquility amidst the chaos.

The sensory experience involves the participant sitting through the sensory book and audio and first takes place in an exhibition, with an individual space for each participant along with the book and headphones for the audio. The duration of one session lasts for 15 minutes.

The sensory book and audio track uses visuals, texture and audio to take the audience on a journey through the chapters (chaos, transience, tranquility) towards tranquility. The book forces an engagement of purely the senses, shutting oneself temporarily out of the world, that in itself achieving a form of personal solace.

The visual language in the book is written in a dot system inspired by braille text, which follows the rhythm and beat of the sounds. The size of dots represent amplitude whilst the spaces represents the pauses between sounds as well as the silence.

The audio is created from sounds ranging from the everyday to the uncommon and imaginary. From jumping into the ocean to swimming with the whales and hearing a monk’s chant in the distance, the sounds portray the journey the protagonist takes towards finding his/her own peace.

The audience is supposed to allow the sound to guide their hands across the dots that lines the pages. There is no right or wrong answer.

chapter 1(chaos) :

chapter 2 (transcience) :

chapter 3 (tranquility) :

Black is chosen as the main colour for the entire concept as it gives the idea of silence and boundless space.

The poster gives details of the exhibition as well as the link to the main website. The poster itself has been embossed with dots as well to give the audience an idea of what to expect from the sensory experience as well as allow direct interaction with the poster by feeling and touching.

The promotional website for Tranquility serves 2 primary functions:
1. Promoting the exhibition by getting participants to register for their session through the website.
2. Selling the experience (book and audio) to the public after the exhibition ends.

天下莫柔弱于水, 而攻堅強者莫之能勝, 以其無以易之。弱之勝強, 柔之勝剛, 天下莫不知, 莫能行。

Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.

– 老子 ｜ lao tzu

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

– bruce lee

Life is surrounded by endless pain and suffering. The suffering of birth, old age, sickness and death is unavoidable. Following the loss of my father, I find myself growing as a person. My father’s illness and death have changed me in ways that will profoundly touch every aspect of my life. However, unlike me, my mother took quite a while to walk out of the grief. This has inspired me to draw a link to water and its flexibility – ability to adapt. Be it taking on any form or seeping through cracks, it has always been able to adjust to the object, finding its way round or through it. 若水 | What the Water Gave Me urges viewers to contemplate about life, encouraging them to come to terms with it. It serves as a form of emotion healing for those who have experienced the pain associated with these sufferings. Are you like water or the rigid glass that restrains it? Will you be like water, taking on a new form or simply be like the shattered glass, unable to mend? Will you be able to accept, adapt, and move on?

Installation

Video documentation of how the audience can participate in the installation.
The sound of glockenspiel is reminiscent to glass bottles knocking against one another. The heavy breathing resembles the last few moments before death – the last gasp of air. The juxtaposition of the bell-like sound with the heavy breathing exudes a haunting feeling that fits the notion of death.

Water | metaphorical representation of human; the audience who participates in the installation; the ideal role model, which we are encouraged to be like.

Bottles | representation of different situations in life – each labeled with ‘birth’, ‘old age’, ‘illness’, and ‘death’ as described by Buddhist teachings as unavoidable sufferings of life. Labels blatantly shown on the bottles just like how these sufferings are evidently present in our lives and we are perfectly aware of them.

Being hung up | suggests how we are being tied down by the pain that we failed to pick ourselves up and break free from it.

The act of pouring | symbolizes flowing into the situations which life has decided to put them in. It enables audience to see how water adapts and fit the shape of its container.

The act of snapping and smashing | symbolizes the mental emancipation

Shattered glass | encourages the audience to contemplate on what they choose to follow: the water or the shattered glass. It urges them to break free from the situation that bounds them. Water takes on a new form and evaporates, while the shattered glass remains broken and can never be mended.

Exhibition Booklet

Booklet uses 160gsm tracing paper to achieve the same translucent quality as the glass bottles. Done in Japanese binding to achieve the look of ancient Chinese books but with a contemporary layout. The slash ( / ) on the translucent cover page was intentionally placed to cancel out the ‘just‘ word of the sentence “for those who just lost somebody” in the acknowledgement page – this book is dedicated to anyone who has lost a loved one.

Invitation

Laser cut on acrylic. Choice of matt acrylic sheet to achieve a translucency that is similar to the exhibition booklet and overall concept. Envelope is handmade using 160gsm tracing paper.

Juxtaposing more than 30 different locations in Singapore in a fantastic, metaphysical and surrealistic subject matter that encompass a kaleidoscopic, fractal and paisley patterns. Creating a visual representation of Singaporeans’ never ending pursuit towards materialism and consumerism. This is like a Singaporean ritual, and it draws similarity from the Buddhist Mandala which brings about the question whether Singaporeans understand that everything we once chased for is all but impermanent.

Tibetan Mandala vs Singapore?

Mandalas are used in the rituals of tantric initiation. They are constructed at the beginning of the initiation, out of grains of colored sand carefully placed on a specially prepared platform. Similar to the construction of a Tibetan Buddhist Sand Mandala, this video and the book will feature the visual process whereby it commences with basic grids, shapes, and later with colours and eventually coming to null to represent the destruction of the mandala, pouring it into the river, back to the universe, signifying that every thing we once desire is actually impermanent and it belongs to the universe.

Technical Aspect

On top of the manifesting patterns and reflected symmetrical imagery, highly contrasting colours are used, like what observed in the original Sand Mandalas. Each location displays extreme depth of detail or stylization of detail, emphasising on the morphing of objects and/or themes and sometimes collage.

The usage of phosphenes, spirals, concentric circles, diffraction patterns, and other entoptic motifs somehow symbolise with the original Buddhist Sand Mandala with its usage of repetitive motifs. Innovative use of technologically enhanced editing including warping and transposition of positive and negative spaces created each piece of work. Part of this technical aspect is also referenced from Michael Shainblum “Mirror City”.

“All conditioned things are impermanent” when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.– Dhammapada, verse 277

Alive : is an installation presenting a collection of personal photographs owned by 25 various individuals of different backgrounds , living amongst us. It brings into light, hidden and forgotten memories captured in an individual’s life, the special moment of tears and sweat that fuels one to live out its fullest. The installation assembles these precious moments together to engage us in a reflection of the essence of being alive.

‘In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans.’ – Kahlil Gibran

In one drop of water we find the essence of the whole ocean. The knowledge of its serenity, its ravaging tides, every corner to each continent and all its living organisms in it.

Just as a drop of water contains the essence of the great ocean. A drop from our sweat and tears contains the essence of our dreams and goals that is to come. Alive : goes back into time to capture the droplet of sweat or tear, that very point in time, the forgotten moment of hardship or emotional pain. Each droplet of water in the glass container, has in it a photograph representing an individual’s moment of hardship and pain, the secret to our ultimate achievement.

Alive : hopes to inspire and motivate our human spirit in our quest to fulfill life’s goals, ambitions and dreams. It does that through reminiscing people’s moments of downfall, this painful yet significant and essential building element that moulds us closer to achieving our ultimate goal.

As water is not bounded by time, it constantly travels around the earth in cycles of various physical states. As it ventures through cities, plants, animals and within us, it carries along with it the essence of the moment of life. A droplet of water captures the reflection of its surroundings. The Installation uses this reflective property of water to show each individual’s important moment.

INSTALLATION :
Every container represents a particular moment captured in an individual’s life. Alive : presents 25 suspended containers of different shapes and forms with an image within a water droplet in it. The containers are arranged to form a circular wavy fashion, depicting the waves of the ocean, the movement of life.

POSTER :
A poster that acts as in invite to experience the installation.

BROCHURE :
The brochure contains the installation’s concept and message. It gives the viewer a ground of dialogue and a space for reflection.

“inspire” is a project that introduces water as an inspirational drink for creatives to drink whenever one is faced with a mental block. By introducing the concept of I-Ching, one will realize the potential of water in terms of creation and development, both externally and internally. Started off as a research in the significance of water in the Chinese culture, it appears that I-Ching is the oldest book that influenced most of the Chinese traditions, including its Chinese characters, religions such as Taoism and Confucianism.

This logo has 3 layers of meaning. First of all, it resembles the water trigram, Kan, in the I-Ching, symbolizing water. Secondly, when the trigram is rotated, it resembles the ancient word ‘water’. It is believed that this trigram influenced the innovation of Chinese characters, particularly from the word ‘water’. Lastly, ‘inspire’ is a drink that allows the user to internalize the water and activate the energy from within his body. Hence, it functions like a mirror, allowing the user to reflect and realize his potential from within.

The wisdom of I-Ching is indeed profound. Trigrams and hexagrams are used to represent the cosmic energies in the universe. It encompasses everything and anything in the world, including its creation, development and even human relations. Water is one of the the elemental trigram which plays a significant role in the development of the universe. Evidently, the main bulk of water-related hexagrams are positioned at the front of the 64 hexagrams in I-Ching which discusses about creation and development. Think about it, it make sense in the real world. In places where there’s water, there will be life. It is the essence of creation. In relevance to the creatives, creation is equivalent to inspirations. Hence, it can be used to harvest inspirations.

Other than harvesting inspirations from within by drinking the water, the user can also consult I-Ching as advices or creative directions (external inspirations) through casting their own hexagrams. As the user drink the water, he/ she will see a water trigram (Kan) underneath the bottle cap. The positioning of the trigram will be determined (either top or bottom) the moment they flip the cap around to see.

As for the following strokes of the hexagram, the user will have to toss the 3 coins provided and jot/ draw them out in the workbook. After which, they will take note if theres changing lines, which results in changing hexagram that has to be referenced with in assessing the situations.

The user will then refer to the explanatory text book that explain the meanings between each of the water-related hexagrams. The cover of the book is slightly different from the others as it highlights on the water element in the entire system of I-Ching.

In a secluded village somewhere in Malaysia, there is a little wooden house near the sea I visit every June and December.

The house is a fifteen minutes drive away from the nearest grocery store. Sometimes there are frogs lurking around in unexpected corners. There is no Internet connection. However, my grandmother and grandfather are safely sheltered in this house. I painted the yellow walls together with my cousins during one of our school vacations. There is a large round table in the kitchen but it can only sit half the family when everyone’s back home, so we take turns eating meals. The sea is a few minutes walk away from the house. Sometimes when we are playing in the water, we would see our grandpa cycling back home with a basket of fish. Sitting in front of the television, my grandma would tell us the plot of the latest melodrama she is watching. Swaying palm trees produce incredibly calming sounds. An insect orchestra plays to us every night. Nothing blocks the full view of the sky from my eyes, and I am reassured that stars actually exist.

There are no expectations of me (except that I should wash my own dishes after meals). At this place, I am free to be happy.

摇到外婆桥 A Trip to Grandma’s is an attempt to recreate the slow-paced and simple living at my grandmother’s house. Have a temporary getaway from this bustling city to recharge your soul. May this experience bring to you comfort and lots of positive energy like how it always does for me.

“From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and i am in them and that is eternity.”

Edvard Munch

DECAY is an installation project which portrays the decomposition of our bodies as we grow older everyday. Here, the depictions of decaying food and living organisms are pure evidences of time passing & ephemerality, reflecting our inevitably deteriorating human bodies which are not seen to our naked eyes. Having a positive take on this harsh reality, my project aims to encourage people out there to live lives to their fullest potential and shine from the inside — past their decaying outer self.

There are three main objects used to represent various aspects of the human body:

Strawberries | Heart

Bread | Flesh

Flowers | Skin

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Deliverables:

1. Books

Three photography journals that contain a series of visual documentations of the three objects respectively every week as time passes. They also consist of the inner reflections of made–believe individuals as they grow older in relation to the their heart, flesh, and skin. The narratives encourage viewers to live their lives in a way that they would not have regretted or done anything different at the end of the day, when age finally catches up on them evidently through their bodies. It urges them to create their own beauty beneath the ugly.

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2. Installation

Accompanying the book journals, the installation showcases the three actual decaying objects enclosed in glass jars. Their presence serves to shock the viewers and make them feel grotesque out. The reality of time passing is right there, evidently before our eyes. Audience will see the jars first, followed by the photography journals in the actual installation.

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3. Poster

The poster is a publicising tool for the exhibition. The full–bleed red strawberries are almost unrecognisable at first look and lures people in to find out more about what this installation is all about.

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You are not a controller of time, but you can control how you spend it to make your life more meaningful.